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Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Brandon Shollenberger

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Latimer Alder, you say:

Which is ‘right’? In each case the conclusions depend on the starting point

The only example you provided which was clearly cherry picking was Girma’s. I believe the first example shows what is causing your confusion. It doesn’t hide any data. Instead, it’s wrong because of the logic it uses. It assumes there was a single linear trend since 988BC, and that’s wrong. It’s bad logic; it’s not hiding data.

If you want to try to figure out if something is cherry picking, here’s a simple process. First, you must be looking at a subset of what’s being analyzed, not the entirety (if everything is there, nothing is being hidden). Second, if you pick a different subset, you must get a notably different answer. That’s all there is to it.


Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Brandon Shollenberger

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By the way, my initial comment was unclear, and I imagine that’s what caused your confusion Latimer Alder. I apologize for that, and I hope my followup comment was more clear. In case it isn’t, let me try being more clear:

Cherry-picking is when results are gotten by hiding adverse information/data.

Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by John Peter

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Well, as an outsider, I have grasped one thing, namely that the money provided for AGW research should be directed primarily at finding out if the “feedback” is mainly positive or negative. That will settle a lot of questions. At this point the serious researchers (including Dr Curry, Dr Spencer and Prof. Lindzen) are all comfortable with a 1 – 1.1C increase in temperature for a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere (before feedbacks are considered). So set all the side issues aside, reduce the bickering and get on with focusing on determining the true impact of feedbacks in the climate system. That to me is the key issue for research and base it on measurable facts. I can certainly grasp the argument that if the feedbacks are positive, then at some stage the earth’s climate system would have run out of control and the earth would have become hot with the oceans converted to a large steam cloud.

Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Vaughan Pratt

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Is there some ‘ideal’ length of time over which a trend should be picked? If so what is it, and what is the justification for choosing it.

This is an excellent question, Latimer. I would say that if you are using a 1 foot ruler to measure things, there is an ideal range of lengths for those things, namely between say 1/16 of an inch and 10 feet. Within that range there is no length that is ideal for measurement by a ruler, the ruler is suitable for all lengths in that range.

By the same token if you are trying to measure the slope of a slightly bumpy incline, there is an ideal range of intervals along that slope to measure it at. It should be longer than a couple of bumps, or the measured slope will be meaningless, but at most the length of the entire incline or errors will enter.

Does that seem reasonable?

Recall that my statement was “If you back off to the bigger picture starting from any time between 1970 and 1990 (so as to be sure there’s no cherry picking going on).” Some people seem to be reading it as “If you back off to the bigger picture starting from 1970.”

My point there was that no matter what starting point you pick, as long as the starting point in a reasonable range, in this case 1970 to 1990, you see the same bumpy slope going up from that point, with no apparent indication of any slowdown in the most recent decade. Starting earlier than 1970 is not reasonable because it’s beyond the length of the incline in question. Later than 1990 is too short because there are not enough bumps to get an idea of the slope.

One you have the slope, you can ask how well the curve in question follows the general pattern of the slope. This seems like a somewhat subjective judgment. For example I would say that the BEST curve follows a general pattern along the whole length of any interval starting between 1970 and 1990 and ending in 2012. But being a subjective judgment, others may well disagree.

Comment on Gleick’s Testimony on Threats to the Integrity of Science by WebHubTelescope

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Perturbations to the steady state. This is how electronics works for one.

Btw, I didn’t say equilibrium, you did. That was drilled in my head as part of my education, quasi-equilibrium, etc.

Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Punksta

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<i>And don’t be ridiculous – “<b>If</b> one assumes” is not an invitation to assume.</i> Steve M : [non-responsive] <i>And since you accept the effect of aerosols, clouds etc is “arbitrary” – indeterminate as of now? – how can we also know they are “sizeable” ?</i> Steve M : [non-responsive] <i>And as regards the 'waffle', what claim [of Lindzen's] do you refer to ?</i> Steve M : [non-responsive]

Comment on Gleick’s Testimony on Threats to the Integrity of Science by Chief Hydrologist

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Let me get this straight Webby – you are considering the case of heat diffusing into the oceans from the atmosphere?

Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Vaughan Pratt

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@Fred What Lindzen wrongly stated is that the adjustments (of aerosols) were made for the purpose of improving the match between simulation and observations – i.e., that they were fudge factors. I don’t believe any modeler has suggested anything but the opposite of that, and in the absence of evidence the modelers are deliberately untruthful, I think we can conclude that Lindzen has no basis for that allegation, and shouldn’t make it.

Fred, your third sentence beginning “I think we can conclude” appears to be based on your second sentence, “II don’t believe any modeler has suggested anything but the opposite of [adjustments serve to improve the match between simulation and observations].”

I’d be fine with this with a really tiny edit: “we” –> “I”.

You have some gall attributing illogical reasoning to the rest of us. If you seriously believe the modelers have a clue about what aerosols have been doing since 1960, I would say it was time for Judith to open up a thread on that topic. (Or reopen it if we’ve already had at least one, I haven’t been keeping track.)

Can the modelers say what the effective altitude of “the aerosols” was between 1960 and 1980? Was it 2 km, 8 km, or 15 km? The first would heat the surface, the last would cool it. Is that what the models say? If not then I’d love to understand why not.


Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Punksta

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Thanks for that very brief note, Chief. Much of it – sadly – as yet still somewhat indigestible to my infant insides though. ( I do though like the Tsonis (?) point about first understanding the natural forcings, and then subtracting these from observed temperatures to reveal the anthro factor ).

But – is your specific point here, that while model-tweaking in ignorance of the physics a la Planck may be acceptable in principle, in practice the complexity hopelessly outweighs current computing power ?

Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Vaughan Pratt

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What he failed to understand, and you do as well, is that there is a great deal of subjectivity in coming to ultimate conclusions

One’s scientist’s subjectivity is another’s illogic. Maybe one day logic will have room for subjectivity, but as any Star Trek fan will tell you, that day is still well in the future on Vulcan. As well as in the faculty lounges of the physics departments of MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, Princeton, Chicago, etc.

No conclusion that admits subjectivity deserves the epithet “ultimate.”

Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Steve Milesworthy

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Sometimes it is difficult to summon a desire to respond to someone who can’t follow a thread. I’m having to guess on how to italicise here – apologies if it doesn’t work:

[I]“And don’t be ridiculous – “If one assumes” is not an invitation to assume.”[/I]

Yes it is.

[I]“And since you accept the effect of aerosols, clouds etc is “arbitrary” –
indeterminate as of now? – how can we also know they are “sizeable” ?”[/I]

You misread for about the fifth time. I did not *accept* that the effect of aerosols is “arbitrary”.

[I]“And as regards the ‘waffle’, what claim [of Lindzen's] do you refer to ?
Steve M : [non-responsive]“[/I]

This is very confusing, because it is you who is accusing me of “waffle”. I have not accused Lindzen of waffle.

Comment on Gleick’s Testimony on Threats to the Integrity of Science by Peter Davies

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Hopeless to read. You need to use paragraphs and shorter sentences if you want people to read your comments.

Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Punksta

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Sometimes it is difficult to summon a desire to respond to someone who can’t follow a thread.
Well spotted – this is indeed the big problem with your posts.

And don’t be ridiculous – “If one assumes” is not an invitation to assume.”
SM: Yes it is.

Obviously not. If one assumes != Assume.

And since you accept the effect of aerosols, clouds etc is “arbitrary” –
indeterminate as of now? – how can we also know they are “sizeable” ?”
SB: You misread for about the fifth time. I did not *accept* that the effect of aerosols is “arbitrary”.

I did not misread – “arbitrary” is the word you actually used.
But, if you actually believe the effects of aerosols and clouds are settled science, do let us know these important finds.

“Waffle”. You made a vague claim about some claim of Lindzen’s being obviously false. Which one/s ?

Hint:
Use html tags for italics etc

Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Steve Milesworthy

Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Punksta

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I didn’t mean that your claim itself was waffle. I meant you were waffling as to what the claim is.
Give us a one paragraph summary so we can see if it’s worth following the RC link.


Comment on JC interview by A physicist

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And as a followup, CTL, it is inspiring to learn that many of Asher Benjamin’s buildings are intact and treasured today, two centuries after they were conceived:

“From a poor boy unaided by friends, by his indefatigable industry and talents in a few years he raised himself to the first rank of his profession.”

Aye, now *that’s* the kind of foresight that America used to acknowledge, respect and even treasure — and even today still should acknowledge, respect and treasure — in our engineers, business folks, designers and scientists!

Judith, now’s a good time for you to start looking farther ahead!  :)

Comment on JC interview by Paul Matthews

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False analogy alert!

Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Girma

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Vaughan & Matt

Harmony of the climate: isolating the oscillations in many climate data sets
by Vaughan Pratt
http://bit.ly/rIyKwk

In the digital filter business, “Mean n” is what is called a low-pass filter. The WoodForTrees function “Isolate n” is the corresponding high-pass filter that passes through exactly what “Mean n” takes out. The original signal (with ceiling(n/2) months deleted from each end) is equal to the sum of the Mean n and Isolate n signals.

Vaughn, from your own article, Isolate = 720 (12months x 60 years) at woodfortrees.org gives you the 60-year oscillation pattern as shown below:

http://bit.ly/zHsPR5

As can be seen in the above plot, the warming from 1970 to 2000 is due to the cyclic 30 years warming.

In the above graph, as the isolate function truncates the data, I have include the global mean temperature data with the appropriate detrending and offsetting.

As a result, Latif’s interpretation of the global mean temperature ( http://bit.ly/wCsZym ) as a superposition of a long-term trend with multi decadal oscillation is appropriate. [ http://eprints.ifm-geomar.de/8744/ ]

Comment on Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons by Chief Hydrologist

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Punksta,

The point Vaughan was making was that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is something that is currently beyond the scope of physics. There is little to suggest that the underlying physics of the AMO is understood in a way that would allow for numerical modelling.

There are lots of unknowns and partially knowns and Hurrell and colleagues were suggesting that new and more complex approaches are needed – requiring a whole lot more computing power. This is what models are good for – exploring couplings.

But if solutions are projected forward – there are mutiple solutions to the same problem possible that will neccessarily exponentially diverge by the nature of the fundamental equations of fluid motion. This arises as a result of even small unknowns in input variables. So here we have an example with 2 starting points close together but the solutions radically diverge in a way that is not known beforehand.

http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view&current=sensitivedependence.gif

This has been known without a doubt since the 1960′s. There is not a chance that current generation models can realistically predict climate 100 years into the future.

Cheers

Comment on What can we learn from climate models? Part II by NW

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I see that Mr. Green Jeans is looking unhappy too.

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